E isn't everything

E-governance is governance first and electronics next. Though administrative improvements
brought about through the use of technology are welcome, the real goal should be enhanced
governance. We cannot also ignore the great risk that mere technocratic e-government may
sharpen the stark inequalities of our society.
The India Together editorial.

For the last several years there has been plenty of debate in India on e-governance. In fact, the term has been bandied about so much that e-governance is now touted as a mantra for forcing shoddy regional and
local bureaucracies into more open, responsive administrations. Hundreds of crores of rupees are being spent in various states, with some states receiving assistance from the central government as well. (1 crore = 10 millions)

But is governance itself improving? We are too large a country to expect a uniform indicator to tell us whether governance has improved since - and because
- information technology became mainstream. Citizen surveys in regions where e-initiatives have been in place for some years now could provide answers. But
in the absence of detailed studies, journalism on government projects can provide some measure of the lessons being learned.

Administration or governance?

The most compelling observation to be made is that there is substantial overload on the term 'e-governance' itself, making it some overarching
metaphor for magical reform. Plenty of e-administration initiatives -
even long overdue citizen conveniences like public utility bill e-payments -
are being passed off as e-governance, as if there is no difference between
the two. It is important to remember that e-governance is governance first
and electronics next.

Where electronic communications and processes
between citizens and government departments
lead to citizens having a greater
say in decision making on local affairs, at least, is
where one could claim
e-governance has arrived. Currently much government decision making is
non-participatory and discourages citizen inputs, so passing off service
delivery improvements alone as governance is misplaced.

Still, local administrations in the country have been computerising their records
and form-processing work so that public services such as issuing birth and
death certificates, driving licenses, etc., can become speedier, and perhaps
also involve less graft. A lot of this is welcome and long overdue. But even
here haphazard computerisation (mixing up old registers with new electronic
records) is causing perverse initial outcomes like presenting overdue notices
to citizens who've already paid their bills.

Operational challenges

Even the more modest goal of good e-administration often stumbles over operational
challenges within government departments. Most experts believe the manner in which
government officials work must itself be redesigned - a step called
process reengineering - because mere computerisation won't do. Computerisation that
eliminates needless physical intermediaries within government departments can
reduce the public's experience of corruption, but reforming work processes is
necessary to give this a better chance of happening. Tactical design of workflow can
help. A common example of this is the 'First-In-First-Out' requirement of some systems.
This requires applications from the public to be serviced in the order they were
received, narrowing the window during which bribes can be sought by administrators.

There are still other challenges that deserve a mention. One is scaling, where
good results are harder to come by. Successful pilot computerisation programs in
a few hundred villages, when they succeed for one service (say accounting), need
to be scaled quickly across the state and in the number of services offered (say
health care and education), using the same computer systems; duplicating
infrastructure is expensive. Another sometimes crippling factor is the manner of
tendering. The overly prescriptive approaches of our governments end up
constraining vendors and prevent the deployment of more wholistic long-term
solutions. There is recognition of this in civil society, because some
organizations are offering free or very low cost products to governments to
avoid becoming trapped within the tendering process itself.

The risk of affirming privileges

Technology has many pluses, but also an important downside - it is more easily
adopted by and steered towards purposes that are of interest to the
privileged few who can access it first. In a highly unequal society,
e-administration is fraught with the potential to worsen - and ossify - the
divide between the haves and the have-nots. Computerising land records might
seem efficient to clear title-holders, for example, but where titles are disputed or never
registered (even on paper), computerisation has the potential to more
strongly affirm the claims of some and dispossess others. In some villages and
among tribals, it is community recognition of ancestral ownership that allows some
people to claim access to and use of lands, especially common lands. Incomplete
and ill-conceived computerisation can easily disaggregate such community-based
standards, by steering the whole society towards individual-focused governance
only.

This points to an even deeper risk, at the design and policy-making levels
themselves. In most serious interventions, talented people and purposeful
organizations from the citizenry have to work with administrators - since there
is simply not enough competency widely available within our governments - to craft
the changes in workflow and sometimes even in local rules or laws. And inevitably,
those with the talent to put technology to new uses are able to engage governments
and urge changes. Technology companies, especially, have a deep interest in
advocating e-administration; after all, they stand to see crores of rupees in
hardware and software sales. But for advocates, acting sometimes from narrow
perspectives runs the risk of ignoring a wider cross-section of views,
and there must be constant alertness to this.

An urban traffic planning and decision-making software tool, for example, could
be designed to treat traffic as merely a problem of flow on roads. It can also
be designed to consider the reality of how roads are actually used in India - by
hawkers, the homeless, as storage and parking for commercial establishments, and
so on. Any solution offered by planners, has the potential to legitimise or
delegitimise some realities, and this has much broader implications than the
definite purpose that is more easily identified.

As with governance, so with e-governance; nothing works like concerted public
pressure for change and accountability. Experts themselves admit to this. The
Parivartan example in New Delhi has shown that if state government food departments
really wanted to streamline distribution of rations and check corruption in the
archaic Public Distribution System, they could simply make inspectors work to
accomplish that goal. For the Delhi government to reform internally and police
the entire state's dealer network to stop pilferage may be a humungous task, but
the fact that local public pressure has worked to bring in transparency in select
areas is evidence enough.

Improved governance through direct citizen interventions will perhaps be the direct
check and balance over runaway claims on what electronic processes might in themselves
accomplish. The fact that a plethora of different engagements are ongoing -
from criticism seminars to campaigns to technology partnerships for new software
solutions - is a better scenario than otherwise. As our governments continue to need
specialised help, vigilance and regular public inputs (perhaps even consultations)
are going to be necessary to balance the risk of e-government simply affirming
privilege.

Clearly, the 'e' in e-government is here to stay. And quite likely even increase in importance,
given new technology's advantage over manual systems which break
down when used to
service large and regionally diverse populations. But getting to better governance itself
is a problem of many dimensions, one that must be
tackled with more than electronics
and computing.

India Together offers an excellent forum for people from diverse fields of expertise to present their views, share their experiences and raise questions about where our country and society are headed in the future.

Amitabha Basu

Retired Scientist

National Physical

Laboratory

India Together reader

India Together offers an excellent forum for people from diverse fields of expertise to present their views, share their experiences and raise questions about where our country and society are headed in the future.

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